As we’re migrating away from Subversion to Git, I’m having to learn a lot about git-svn. Andy has posted a few articles on this topic, but I wanted to share a quick tip that I find myself forgetting.

Working with Subversion branches

While you’re hopefully already familiar with how great local branches are with Git, you might not know that you can connect local branches to remote branches in your Subversion repository. This allows those of us who are using Git locally to work against Subversion branches.

I’m going to assume the following:

Your team is using Subversion

Your team already has a branch that you’re working in

Your team is following Subversion directory conventions (branches/, tags/, and trunk/)

You have Git installed (with SVN extensions)

Checkout the Subversion project with Git

Please visit Andy’s tutorial, Git SVN Workflow, for a more detailed explanation of the following commands.

Great, once this is done… you’re master (local) branch is linked to trunk/.

Mapping a local repository to a remote branch

Assuming that your team is working in a Subversion branch on the current iteration of work. Our team has a naming convention for branches for each iteration. For example, if we’re in Iteration 18, we’ll write this as ITER-018 everywhere (Basecamp, Lighthouse, Subversion, etc…). At the start of each iteration, we create a new branch with this naming convention.

For ITER-018, the Subversion branch would be located at:

http://svn.yourdomain.com/repos/project_name/branches/ITER-018

If you were to do a git branch -r, you should see ITER-018 show up in the list. Now, the one thing that wasn’t clear when I first read the git-svn documentation was that you can’t just checkout that branch with one command. In fact, this has tripped me up a few times.

First, you’ll need to checkout a new local branch. I’ve opted to come up with my own convention for local branches and in this case, I’ll name it iter_018.

git co -b iter_018

So, now I’m in the iter_018 branch, which is local. I’m currently still mapped to trunk/, which isn’t what we want. However, all we need to do is reset where Git is currently pointed to. We can run git reset to point this to the ITER-018 branch.

git reset --hard ITER-018

That’s it! Now, the local iter_018 branch will point to branches/ITER-018 in your Subversion repository. This will allow you to work with your existing repository branch and still reap the benefits of local Git repositories.

What about master?

Good question. The git reset command that you ran will ONLY apply that that individual local branch. So, master is still pointing to trunk/. This will allow you to have several local branches that map to remote branches.

Next Steps…

If you’re working with Git already.. great!

If you’re working in an environment that using Subversion, git svn provides you the ability to start exploring Git without making your entire team switchover. Perhaps your a consultant and working for a client that uses Subversion… no problem!

We’re still using Subversion for past client projects and are considering GitHub, which just launched (to the public) today for future projects. A few of us are already using GitHub for open source projects.

Fun.. I just saw the following tweet pass by as I began to wrap up this post.

Our team has been migrating towards using Git as our primary SCM. We have way too many Subversion-based projects and repositories to just do a clean switch over and not everybody on the team has had time to start playing with it. Baby-steps…

So, for those of us who want to use it day-to-day, we’re using git-svn.

Andy Delcambre has posted the first in a series of blog articles to help you pick up on using Git on Subversion-based projects. Check out his article, Git SVN workflow to get up to speed.

Also, if you’re on OSX and using Git… check out Justin Palmer’s new project, GitNub, which describes itself as, “a Gitk-like application written in RubyCocoa that looks like it belongs on a Mac.” This looks promising. :-)

It’s been just over a year since I posted the article, Install Ruby, Rails, and PostgreSQL on OSX and it still gets quite a bit of traffic. Unfortunately, there have been a few changes in the install process that have caught people.

Today, I am leaving my PowerBook G4. It’s being replaced with a MacBook because the logic board is on the fritz. So, guess what that means? I get to install Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL on OS X again! I figured that I would post a revised version of my previous article for those who may go through this same process in the near future.

Step Zero: Install iTerm (optional)

You’ll spend a lot of time in your terminal as a Rails developer. I’m not a big fan of Terminal.app as it lacks tabbed windows1 and you’ll often find me with around ten tabs open. I’ve been using iTerm for a few years and it’s definitely improved in the past year and doesn’t seem to crash nearly as often as it used to.

Once installed, I always change the default color scheme as I prefer the white on black schema. The menus in iTerm are lacking some thoughtful interaction design, but I’ve figured out the right way to do it (after a long time of stumbling on it by accident). In iTerm, you’ll want to edit the Default bookmark, which you can access by going to Manage Bookmarks under the Bookmarks Menu.

Set the Display value to classic iTerm and you’re golden.

Now… let’s get to business…

Step 1: Install Xcode Tools

Without installing Xcode tools from Apple, we’re not going to get very far. First, you’ll need to grab a copy of Xcode, which you can download on Apple’s Developer Connection site. It’s almost a 1GB download, so you’ll want to start your download and use your multi-tasking skills and grab a Viso, read some blogposts.

I’m going to make the assumption here that you know how to install a dmg on osx. Once this is installed, you can move on to the next step!

Step 2: All Your MacPorts are Belong to Us

MacPorts (formerly known as DarwinPorts) is a package management system for OS X. This is what we’ll use to install most of the necessary programs to develop and run your Ruby on Rails applications. If you’re from the Linux or BSD world, you are likely familiar with similar tools… such as: apt-get, port, and yum.

You’ll want to download MacPorts and install the dmg file.

Now that this is installed, we should test it.

With a new terminal, run the following:

$ port version
Version: 1.442

Success! Let’s get going…

Step 3: Installing the Ruby on Rails development stack

We’re going to go through a series of small steps, which may take some time depending on how fast your internet connection and computer is.

Install Ruby and RubyGems

In order to install Ruby, we’re going to use MacPorts with the port command, which is now available for installing various packages on our OS X machines.

$ sudo port install ruby rb-rubygems

It’ll probably take a while to download and install Ruby and all of it’s known dependencies. In the meantime, check out some funny code. KTHXBYE!

Still waiting for it to install, perhaps you could do something like… begin writing a comment on this post, writing your own blog post, watch a funny video, or recommend me. I walked to Backspace with Gary to get an Americano… and it’s still not done. :-p

(minutes/hours/weeks later)

Okay… I trust that it finished installing Ruby and RubyGems without any hiccups. Let’s test them from our terminal to make sure.

Install Rails-friendly gems

Mongrel

If you’re developing with Rails, it’s highly recommended that you use install and use Mongrel for your development and production environments. The following command will install the mongrel and mongrel_cluster gems (including their dependencies).

$ sudo gem install -y mongrel mongrel_cluster

* Note: Be sure to select the proper platform for mongrel. (hint: OS X is NOT mswin32)

At PLANET ARGON, we develop our applications on top of PostgreSQL. I’ve long been advocating the adoption of this awesome open source database in the Rails community. Just over a year ago, Jeremy Voorhis (PLANET ARGON alumnus) and I were interviewed on the Ruby on Rails podcast and had the opportunity to discuss our preference of PostgreSQL over the alternatives (mysql, sqlite, firebird, etc.).

We’re going to install PostgreSQL 8.2 from MacPorts by running the following command.

Adding PostgreSQL commands to your $PATH

For some reason, MacPorts doesn’t add the PostgreSQL programs to the default bash PATH, which means that you can’t run psql, pg_dump, or createdb/dropdb without specifying the full path to where they were installed. What we’ll do is add them to our default terminal profile.

sudo vi /etc/profile

(you can use mate, emacs, joe or any other preferred editor to do this)

This file gets loaded every time a new terminal session is started.

Let’s add /opt/local/lib/postgresql82/bin to the end of the value for PATH.

PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/opt/local/lib/postgresql82/bin"

Save the file and then open a new terminal. To test this, you should get the following output when you run which psql.

$ which psql
/opt/local/lib/postgresql82/bin/psql

Creating a new PostgreSQL user

When I’m working on Rails applications in my development environment, I really don’t want to have to specify a username and password in every config/database.yml file for each of our ongoing client projects. When PostgreSQL was installed, it created a superuser named postgres, which is great, but I’d like one that matches my system username, so that I’m not prompted at all for a username or password to connect to PostgreSQL.

To do this, we’ll use the createuser command, which comes with PostgreSQL. As you can see, I’m creating a new user with superuser privileges (and will hopefully be the last time I have to do a -U postgres).

If this returns true, than we should be good to go. We’ve now built a professional development environment for working with Ruby on Rails. Doesn’t that feel great?

Test your install

You can look back at my older post to walk through the process of testing out your setup with a new Rails application.

Closing thoughts

I hope that this post has been useful for you. It took me a few hours to walk through this process and it’s how all of our designers and developers at PLANET ARGON installs and configures their development environment.

About me...

I'm having a blast in my current role as the Chief Evangelist at Planet Argon, a web design, development, and deployment agency. We specialize in bringing ideas to life for our clients. If you're looking for a fantastic team to work with on your project, consider hiring my team.